Hello Everyone,
I am looking for hopper cars that can dump by themselves using electro-magnets or small motors or ??.
I will modify each hopper car I get if I have to but I wanted to see if there already is hopper cars manfactured like this.
Thank You.
Monty81.
This is an old Mantua operating hopper car:
You can get a bigger picture by clicking on it. I have about a dozen of these left over from my boyhood in the early 1960’s. They aren’t made anymore, but they show up on eBay. Look for “Mantua operating hopper” or maybe “Tyco operating hopper.” Take a close look at the picture for the oversized clamshell doors on the bottom. “Non-operating hopper” will also show up in this search, remember, and there are some of those out there, too.
If you go the eBay route, you’ll also see similar cars marked for “sugar” or “cement.” These are covered, which kind of defeats the purpose, if you ask me. I think the covers are removeable, though, so you could remove the tops and re-paint them as coal-haulers, if you were interested in putting together a large fleet of these. Also, be aware that these were made with truck-mounted (“Talgo”) horn-hook couplers. I’ve taken the time to remove the couplers and mounts from the trucks and add body-mounted Kadees to mine. It’s not a bad job to tackle, but you’ll need the Kadee draft gear boxes for mounting.
The hopper door operation is not prototypical. They open outwards, like a clamshell (hence the name for the doors.) There is a special actuator track that spreads the doors. It’s purely mechanical, and would not be difficult to build. The actuator sticks up high enough that most of my engines will not go over it, so it’s on a siding where only pushed hoppers go.
The do work, though. I’ve got mine filled with Woodland Scenics “cinders” ballast, which is black and kind of looks like coal. It’s a bit light, but most of the coal ends up going out through the doors and into the hidden bin below the layout. (That “pile” of c
I have a promotion video from about 1995 around home somewhere from a small company that was selling modified MDC ore cars that had been rebuilt with operating hopper doors. Looked pretty neat in the video, but the cost per car was like 3-4 times the cost of a stock ore car.
Other than that video I’ve never seen one in person, don’t know if they ever sold any or not??
I have posted this before about Tyco-Mantua Operating Hopper Cars, making them look a bit more releastic with a little paint, decals and weathering. Wish some company would buy the molds and bring them back on the market, the ebay prices have sky rocketed.
Great web page, Steamage. You’ve weathered those old babies beautifully.
This is a photo of my actuator. I took it off the original brass track, painted it and re-mounted it. It was originally a light cream color, which shows through a bit where the paint has worn off. With the center open, the trip pins on the Kadees don’t get hung up.
Other operating hopper cars are/were the Ulrich triple (which operated only by pushing a single car towards the trip mechanism–the mechanism was a cast metal bit that was spiked down–the car couldn’t run “through” the mechanism–stub siding only) and the Revell (which operated as a “run-through” like the Tyco, but had “thingys” that stuck out from the side of the car and were actuated by a trip mechanism beside, rather than under, the car–said mechanism was integral to a coal trestle designed for the purpose).
The Ulrich was probably the most prototypical looking design, as it had three working doors that were linked. All you saw was a little tab hanging under the car for the actuation.
I never ran my cars with a load. Has anyone done this? How much leakage? Too much?
Also, Roundhouse had a car they called a sand and gravel car (as I recall). It didn’t look like a typical hopper. The one I’ve got has operating doors and a “foot” operated trip mechanism on the car. I think the doors are also closed with a wheel (two really) on the car side. Like many things, it’s tucked away somewhere in a box.
Ed
The size of gravel (sand grains) is really important for the Tyco hoppers to unload correctly, and also using a wide flat file or emery paper to make flat the closing edges of the clam shell gate. This so no material leeks through. Haven’t had any problem of accidental dumps, but don’t rough handle the cars ether. The Sun Valley Local can dump four cars at a time.
I have a couple of the Ulrich hoppers. I found it was rather challenging to get the doors to fit flush, but as long as you didn’t use to fine a load, there wasn’t much leakage. Sometimes, the unloading required a continuous push from the loco to fully unload, especially with small 0-4-0s.
My fit problems were probably due to a lack of building skills back in my teens.
Hi MisterBeasley,
your Vollmer loader brings back a lot of fond memories of my younger years. Yes that building can sure load a hopper or two.
Frank